Anatomy of Creative's Zen Micro Audio Player By : Justin Ong Category : Sound (http://www.hardwarezone.com/articles/cat.php?id=9) Approved by : Jimmy Tang Approved on : Monday, 13th December, 2004

Prologue

In this installment, we'll take a break from our usual pace of product reviews and have a closer look at the recently reviewed Zen Micro audio player from Creative. By our definition of a closer look, we're actually talking about a complete and comprehensive disassembly of the Zen Micro and hopefully with this, we can all walk away with a better understanding on the anatomy of the impressive portable audio player. Through this detailed and documented article, we'll be able to satisfy the curiosity of not only ourselves, but also the group of consumers who isn't content with just using the Zen Micro as it is. Although we're absolutely confident about the audio performance of the player, we just feel that occasionally there's a need for us to move beyond our usual scope of product reviews. This step-by-step disassembly guide that we've put together is just one of many testaments to our collective passion and appreciation of quality hardware.

Since this guide involves disassembling your Zen Micro, we have to point out that the warranty of your Zen Micro would be considered null and void should the disassembly be carried out by non-certified personnel (yourself included). HardwareZone will not be held responsible in any way should you somehow end up with an inoperable unit either by misinterpretation of our article or in any actions of similar capacity.

All right, serious tone of disclaimer done and over with, let's get ourselves started with the guide proper then.

A cool black Zen Micro is the star for this disassembly guide.

You'll need to prepare a 1.4mm flathead screwdriver and a micro Phillips screwdriver. These are the only two tools you need for disassembling the Zen Micro.

Slide off the battery cover at the rear of the player to kick start the disassembly process.

With the battery cover removed, you’ll now need to extract the Li-ion battery from the player in order to gain access to the underlying metal piece. This particular metal piece secures the main body of the Zen Micro to the plastic housing for a seamless assembly.

Removing the main body from the safety of its plastic housing is a two-step procedure. The first step involves the unscrewing of a tiny screw hidden from sight underneath a plastic fixture glued at the crown of the Zen Micro. This piece has to be removed before we can move forward and to do that, we'll need to set the player on Hold mode.

With the button pushed and locked in a Hold position, the flathead screwdriver will have ample clearance for you to pry out the plastic fixture. A gentle push of the flathead screwdriver in the direction indicated by the arrow is enough to remove this plastic piece.

A screw (circled) would be revealed once the plastic fixture has been pried off.

Unscrew this tiny fastener with a micro Phillips screwdriver to complete the first step of the detachment.

The second step is a lot simpler, but before we move on any further, we'll need you to focus your attention to the circled areas first. These are the areas on the plastic housing where the metal piece latches on to secure the main body to the plastic housing.

With the help of both your thumbs, press and slide the metal piece downwards to complete detaching the main body from the housing. You can tell by comparing the position of the metal tooth (in the rectangular box) of this picture to the one shown above.

With the two steps completed (the easy part), the main body is now unlatched from the plastic housing and a gentle push from your thumb is all you need to free the main body from the housing.

The main body (on the right) contains the circuit board, the one-inch hard drive, LCD and touchpad. This entire piece is composed of a few components assembled together.

Here's a look at the main body in another angle. The black little nub you see is the on-board microphone.

Do pay extra attention to these microconnectors (highlighted by the red square boxes) as they are extremely prone to breakages if caution is not exercised.

The next step is to remove the metal fastening piece so that we can reach the underlying circuit board. Three pairs of legs (three on each side as indicated by the arrows) would have to be pried out of their sockets to accomplish this.

You'll need to carry out the prying process on the three legs on the other side as well.

The delicate circuit board of the Zen Micro will be revealed once you have the metal plate removed. Do remember to ground yourself before you touch the sensitive circuit board. A simple way to ground yourself is to touch the metallic casing of your computer.

Push all six catches that are clamping the circuit board in place outwards to proceed with the disassembly of the circuit board.

Do not flip up the circuit board in one quick motion as there's a flex ribbon cable attached underneath the board.

Here's a look at the ribbon cable and its connector. You'll need to unplug this cable (in the direction of the arrow) in order to flip the circuit board over. Underneath this PC is the elusive 5GB one-inch hard drive.

A Seagate 5GB ST1 one-inch hard drive is revealed after the ribbon cable has been safely unplugged and with the circuit board fully flipped opened. A Samsung 16MB SDRAM module can be found soldered onto the board as a buffer for the Seagate hard drive when the Zen Micro is playing back digital audio files.

Note: for the MP3-player project, you are recommended to stop here.

You should be able to examine the circuit board and identify some of the ICs. We will leave the drive and display where they are.

Insert the tip of the flathead screwdriver beneath the corner of the hard drive…

…pivot the screwdriver on the metal casing and the Seagate hard drive can be jacked out of its cavity easily.

You can pull out the interfacing data pins easily with the hard drive completed extracted.

The Seagate ST1 5GB is a one-inch hard drive specially designed for handheld consumer electronics devices such as the Creative Zen Micro. This very same drive can also be found in another hard disk based MP3 player, the Rio Carbon.

A Synaptics controller chip is used for the touchpad of the Zen Micro. This chip is found in the cavity used to sit the Seagate ST1 hard drive. North of this chip is the LCD block of the Zen Micro and like the pieces disassembled so far, the display block is designed to be removable as well.

The LCD can be easily taken out without the assistance of a tool.

And finally we have the Zen Micro successfully disassembled and neatly lined up.

We leave you with this plan view of all the nine pieces of the Zen Micro we have disassembled and we hope that you have enjoyed this step-by-step guide as much as we did in putting it together.